Russian hydropower giant RusHydro is moving ahead with plans to set up an ocean-power turbine research and development (R&D) centre as a springboard for a multi-gigawatt tidal energy project in the White Sea.

The company’s board has approved plans to begin building the Severnaya Innovative Centre of Tidal and Wave Energy on Dolgaya Bay in the Barents Sea, where it will develop turbines to be used in the 8GW Mezenskaya tidal power plant.

A development of this scale could generate 38TWh of electricity a year, claims RusHydro, “comparable to generation of the whole Volga-Kama cascade of hydropower plants”.

The Severnaya centre, which will be run by RusHydro's R&D institute, JSC NIIES, is expected to cost RUR7.5bn ($268m) in total to construct. It should open its doors in four years.